by Lucy Wild
“Who is he?”
“You’ll like him.”
“Who is he?”
“His name’s Kingsley.”
“He sounds like he’s out of a Merchant Ivory film.”
“He’s the son of Tony Matteo.”
“You want me to marry the son of a gangster?”
“He’s not a gangster, he’s a businessman same as me.”
“He’s a gangster. What’s going on, Dad?”
He sighed, the neutral expression on his face vanishing for a moment. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Bullshit. This isn’t you talking, you’ve never mentioned marriage before. You’ve never cared what I’m up to as long as I don’t spend too much.”
He sighed again, this time rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers before continuing. “You have to marry him, all right.”
“I don’t have to do anything, not if you don’t tell me why.”
“Christ, can’t you just do as you’re told?”
“Can’t you just tell me the truth.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “I owe him a favour.”
“A favour? I’m a favour for a gangster?”
“It’s not like that. Listen, back when you were little, things were a lot tougher than they are now.”
“Oh, here we go, the old candle light and no food to eat story, I’ve heard it before, Dad.”
“Shut up,” he said, pointing at me, his eyes narrowing. “For once in your life, just shut up and listen.”
I did. He looked more serious than he ever had before. It was a look that terrified me because he looked scared. He never looked scared.
“My first bit of legal work was for the Matteo family.”
“Oh, Dad, you didn’t?”
“I had to, sweetheart. We’d have been on the streets otherwise.”
I thought about replying but then I saw the look on his face again.
“Tony said I owed him a favour at the time.” His face twisted as he tried to keep it under control. “He laughed when he said it, I thought he was joking.”
“But he wasn’t?”
“He came to see me last week, told me he needed a wife for his son, told me he was calling in his favour.”
“Oh, Dad.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t talk to me that way. We don’t have a choice, Isabel. You don’t know him, you don’t know what he’s capable of.”
“All right.”
“What?” He looked surprised by my reaction.
“I said, all right.”
“You mean you’ll do it?”
“Whatever you say, father.”
“Wonderful!” A bell rang in the distance. “Come and have breakfast with me. We’ll talk.”
“No thanks. Is that everything? Only I’ve a date with a duvet and I don’t want to miss it.”
“Of course, you go get some rest. I can let you know the details later.”
The driver was waiting for me outside and I didn’t let my fixed smile fade until I was in the car. “Now will you take me home?” I asked, closing my eyes again.
The car set off as I waited for the nausea to pass. So he wanted me to marry Kingsley Matteo, son of scum? My father, the big man, the smart man, yet not smart enough to see I was only nodding for long enough to get away from him. There was no way I was marrying the kid of a man so oily he probably slept in a giant sardine tin. I’d go home, get some sleep, then start packing. When I got married, if I ever got married, it wouldn’t be for a ‘favour’ or to a man no one liked I would marry for one reason and one reason only. I would marry for love. Until that day, I was out of there.
FOUR
JAKE
When Tony Matteo tells you to do something, only a fool would refuse. He told me to go see Jonathan Fleming so I went. That’s how I ended up walking up the steps into the house of a man I’d never met before. That’s how all of this began.
I was in the middle of a job when he called. He never called in the middle of a job. That was how I knew it was serious. The job was a simple collection and I was almost done. A restaurant owed Tony money and it was my job to get it from them.
“They’ve been holding out on me,” he said in the thickest Sicilian accent he could manage. Matteo was a dangerous man but the nearest he’d been to Sicily was watching the Godfather films. He’d never left England, yet to hear him speak, you’d think he’d only just arrived here. You’d never catch me telling him his accent was stupid though, I liked my fingers attached to my hands. “I’ve given them long enough, Jake. Go get my money.”
I nodded. “Consider it done.”
The restaurant was owned by a slimy little guy called Alberto. Every week he had a different excuse for why he hadn’t paid his cut. If he’d been on my patch, the problem wouldn’t have happened but this is the thing about being only one man, you can’t be everywhere at once. The others are nowhere near as persuasive as me, they needed to up their game, I couldn’t clean up everyone’s mess, there weren’t enough hours in the day.
I drove through the city and stopped across the street from the place. The sign was missing a letter. ‘Al-erto’s,’ it read. It wouldn’t have surprised me if his excuse was he was saving up for a new letter for the sign. I sat for a moment and watched, casing the street just to be sure. Better to be cautious than dead.
The street was quiet enough. It was half past three, the lunch time crowd had gone and dinner wouldn’t pick up for a few hours, the perfect time to pay a visit to a restaurant.
I crossed the road and weaved between the outdoor tables, pushing the door open before pausing, scanning the interior in under a second. A couple on the table near the bar, a middle-aged guy on his own to my left, a group of three by the window. Waiter by the kitchen door, another walking my way. No sign of Alberto.
“Can I help you, Sir?” the waiter asked, stopping in front of me. “Table for one?”
“You’re new here, right?”
“I am, Sir. Just started today. Are you a regular?”
“Where’s Alberto?”
“He went out, Sir.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Excuse me?”
I leant towards him, just far enough to fix him in my hardest stare. “I said I’ll wait.”
He crumbled at once, blinking and swallowing at the same time, taking a step backwards before stuttering, “Of course, Sir.”
I walked round him, taking the table furthest from the door. The sound of conversation faded away as I waited. He’d be back eventually and there was no way I was returning to Matteo without the money.
I was sat there for an hour. Every now and then the waiter would look across at me, as if he was thinking about coming over and asking me to leave. Then he’d think better of it and continue on his way. The middle aged guy left, followed by the trio. There was only the couple and me. When the door swung open and Alberto walked in, I waited, observing in silence as he struggled with too many carrier bags in his arms. He passed through to the kitchen without stopping.
Before the door had swung closed, I was across the restaurant and through, watching the colour drain from his face when he saw me.
“Mr Murdoch,” he said, his voice quiet. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s been a long time, Alberto,” I replied.
My phone rang a second later. I held up a finger to silence him before answering.
“Where are you?” Matteo asked from the other end of the line.
“Alberto’s.”
“Get over to the Fleming place when you’re done. He needs you to do something for him.”
He hung up before I could reply, leaving me wondering what the hell was so urgent as to need to interrupt me at work.
Alberto was still staring at me, pressing himself against the counter top behind him. “What do you want from me?” He sounded scared. He looked as if he thought I hadn’t seen him pick the knife up and hold it behind his back while I was on the phone.
“You k
now exactly what I want.”
“I…I haven’t got it. Things have been running a little slow recently.”
“No excuses, Alberto. I leave here in two minutes either with the money or with your thumbs in a bag. What’s it to be?”
He swung the knife towards me so slow it was laughable. I caught his arm and twisted it back towards him, not far enough to break it but close. He dropped the knife with a squawk as I pushed him down to his knees.
“That was stupid, wasn’t it?” I said, bending his arm a little further. “How much cooking can you do with a broken arm, Alberto?”
I was in the car with the money in a paper bag exactly three minutes later. That’s the problem with all the newcomers to this business, they listen to any old excuse, they let people get away with anything. Let them walk all over you and they’ll do that forever. You just need to be firm with people. Don’t take shit from anyone.
Normally, I’d head back to Matteo after a job like this, but not this time. This time I swung onto the road and headed out of town, the phone call had changed my plans.
I didn’t know a huge amount about Jonathan Fleming. I knew he was a lawyer, who didn’t? I knew he’d done some work for the Matteo family in the past, though what work that was, I had no idea. Legal stuff didn’t interest me, that was for far bigger crooks than me.
The Fleming house was so famous even I’d heard of it, one of the biggest estates in the county. There was no mistaking it as I approached, the huge wrought iron gates painted blue and green, the rolling lawns beyond, the massive house on top of the hill overlooking the surrounding landscape.
I’d not been inside before and I had no idea what was waiting for me when I got there. I could only guess that Matteo owed him a favour and that’s why I was waiting for the intercom to respond to me, my engine grumbling at being forced to stand still for so long.
“Yes,” a voice snapped from the tinny speaker at last.
“Mr Matteo sent me.”
There was no reply but a second later the gates swung open and I drove slowly up the drive towards the house. I wouldn’t say my heart raced, it never did. But I did feel a slight feathery tension, the same thing I felt before every big job. I got the feeling someone needed taking care of and I was going to have to do it. Turned out, I was right, someone did need taking care of, just not in the way I’d imagined.
FIVE
JAKE
The front door opened as I approached it and I was greeted by a balding man in his fifties. The cut of his suit and the haughty manner with which he held the door told me I was facing the man of the house. His arrogance was belied by anxiety though, an anxiety that showed itself in the way his eyes fixed on mine like a drowning man stares at a life ring. What was wrong with him?
“You’ve got to help me,” he said, grabbing my arm and tugging me into the house. “Please, tell me you can help me.”
“All right,” I replied, yanking my arm loose and passing into the hallway. “Just calm down.”
“Calm down, he says,” he replied, breaking into a nervous laugh. “Tony Matteo is going to kill me and he says calm down. That’s funny.”
Tony was going to kill him? What had he done? Tony never killed anyone himself. I frowned. “Talk.”
“Talk, right, right. Sorry. God, where do I begin?”
“At the beginning is usually best.”
“We haven’t got time for that, she could be anywhere by now.”
I’d run out of patience. I grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him through the nearest doorway. I found a chair and shoved him down into it. Scraping another chair across the varnished wood, I sat opposite him and folded my arms. “Talk.”
“You’ve got to help me. My daughter’s gone missing.”
“And what’s that got to do with me?”
“She’s supposed to be marrying Kingsley Matteo.”
“I see.” Now it made sense. Kingsley was Tony’s only son. So that was why Matteo had rung me. He’d set Kingsley up with Fleming’s daughter and she’d taken the eminently sensible step of running away. But why choose me? I didn’t find people. I disappeared people.
“When you say gone missing, do you mean someone’s taken her?”
“I don’t know,” he said, a flash of anger mixed in with the sorrow in his voice. “All I know is that she’s gone. She’s not answering her phone, there’s no one at her place. She’s just gone.”
I took a deep breath before answering. This wasn’t me, this wasn’t my job. But for whatever reason, Matteo had chosen me to track her down. What choice did I have? If I turned the job down, it’d be me who’d be disappearing. Permanently.
“Will you help me?” he asked, leaning forwards in his chair.
“This isn’t what I normally do, have you gone to the police?”
“Tony said you were better than them. He said you’d find her, tell me you can find her.”
“I need somewhere to start, any idea where she’d go?”
“Not a clue.”
“She’s your daughter. You must have some idea.”
He sighed. “We’re not close.”
“Have you got a photo of her at least?”
“It…it’s all at her place. I’ll find you the key, hang on. Oh, wait, here’s a photo.”
He stood up and walked over to the desk in the corner of the room. He brought back a portrait in a silver frame. The face in the picture scowled up at me. “How long ago was this taken?” I asked.
“Five years ago.”
“So how old is she now?”
“Nineteen. Her hair’s different now.”
“Different how?”
“Blonde. She used to dye it darker, part of rebelling against me, I guess. Wait there, I’ll get you the key to her place.”
I spent another half an hour with him, getting as many details as I could which wasn’t many. By the time I left, I had a pretty good idea where she’d gone. A spoiled little rich girl with a distant father who paid all her bills. A girl like that wouldn’t go far. Nor would she go somewhere she didn’t know, it’d be too scary for her. People are so predictable.
I left him with my number and instructions to ring me if he found out she’d used her credit card. Well, his credit card really. It sounded to me as if she’d never had to pay for a thing in her life.
I could picture her perfectly. She’d be holed up in a hotel, putting everything on the card and having her little tantrum, waiting for her father to back down. He’d probably never made her do anything before that she didn’t want to. He told me as much before I went. “She was such a good little girl,” he said as I was leaving, his eyes turning misty, “at first.”
I drove to her flat, not sure what might be waiting for me there. Her place was on the second floor of an old building, though the interior was about as modern as they come, all gleaming glass and chrome. Wherever she’d gone, she’d gone in a hurry. The drawers in her bedroom were pulled out, clothes streaming from them. There was an open suitcase on the bed and it looked as if she’d been halfway through packing it when she’d decided to leave it behind.
On the wall was a photo collage. It looked like she’d taken dozens of shots in the same dingy nightclub, blurred group photos of drinking and dancing that could have been taken anywhere. To the right of the collection I found a few outdoor shots, kayaking, standing on a hilltop, camping. It was clearly somewhere she liked going to as she was different ages in the photos even though they were the same place, some small rural town.
There she was aged twelve or so, then again on the same campsite a few years older. And again, older still. I took the most recent looking photo down, at least I had a better idea of what she looked like now.
She had a desk in the corner of the bedroom. The drawer to it was locked but I soon fixed that, yanking it open to find a mountain of unopened bills inside.
I rifled through the paperwork, not sure exactly what I was looking for. Whatever it was, I didn’t find it. In fact, ot
her than getting a glimpse into the world of a nineteen year old rich girl, I didn’t get much out of my visit at all.
I was about to leave when I noticed a postcard on the fridge. It was the campsite from the photos. On the back, it was branded at the top. Gentle Falls. I read the rest of the postcard.
‘Having a great time, reminded us of that time you brought the airhorn!?! See you soon and you better come with us next time, not ponce off with Ben. Love, C and A.’
It was undated, the postmark smeared into a black smudge.
I pocketed the postcard, taking it with me as I went back to my car. I’d start there, see if she’d gone back to the place she clearly loved so much. If her father knew her better, he’d have gone there himself, no doubt, but he seemed like a man too wrapped up in his own world to care about hers. I got the feeling he cared more about his own neck than his daughter’s and that was the only reason why he was so desperate to get her back.
I had no idea how long it might take to find her so I went home first, climbing the steps to my own flat, the peeling paint on the walls catching my attention for the first time, a sharp contrast to her place.
I went past my door and kept climbing up to the third floor, knocking once on the only door on this level.
“Hold on,” an old woman’s voice called out and then I heard the scraping of a chain. I shook my head and smiled. “Oh, Jake, it’s you,” she said when she answered, looking more stooped than ever.
“Good evening, Miss Wilson,” I replied.
“How many times must I tell you, call me Vera.”
“As many times as I’ve told you there’s no need to bolt your door in your own building when I live downstairs.”
“Not all my tenants are as trustworthy as you, Jake.”
“A doctor, an accountant and a baker?”
“Exactly. Shifty, all of them. Especially that Gunnell fellow.”
“He’s training to be a surgeon, I doubt he’s doubling up as a burglar on the side.”
